Leak reveals specs of GK104 GPU that will succeed the GF114 of GeForce GTX 560 Ti cards

Jan 20, 2012 07:37 GMT  ·  By

NVIDIA may be trying to make up for how underwhelming the GeForce 400 series of graphics cards were, or at least this is what a certain leak implies.

A report has revealed the alleged performance numbers, or some of them, of the NVIDIA GK104 GPU (graphics processing unit).

This is the chip that will power the Santa Clara, California-based company's mainstream cards, also known as mid-range models.

That means that the GK104 will land on the card, or cards, that will succeed the GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

As it happens, the placement on the mid-level market segment does not appear to be a reliable indicator of the performance.

In fact, if the info provided by Inpai.com.cn is true, it looks more like NVIDIA wants these mainstream cards to have a performance close, if not similar to AMD's high-end products.

That is to say, the successor to the GTX 560 Ti will have a performance around the level of AMD's Radeon HD 7900 series.

The GK104 has a memory interface of 256 bits and will be backed by up to 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM.

Meanwhile, the TDP (thermal design power) is of 225W.

Unfortunately, the leak did not give any clock speeds, though it did say that GK104 would have a massive performance improvement over its predecessor, GF114.

Needless to say, the implications of this are massive, but one should not be too quick to jump headlong into excitement just yet.

After all, back when the GeForce 400 series was being prepared, there was a similar level of hype, with many hoping for a product series that would clearly best AMD's Radeon.

As many know, the hype only gave way to disappointment when the GTX 480 appeared, and it was only the arrival of the 580 that actually (and barely) earned NVIDIA the performance crown again.

At this point, everyone would do best to relax and not set any expectations until the Kepler finally launches. The release date of GTX 660 cards is unknown, but the GTX 680 could arrive as early as February.